Describing the Transformation Preparation Service for SAP Business Suite

In 2025, SAP's priority has evolved to Suite First & AI First, and with it, the SAP Business Suite comes to the center of the product strategy. RISE with SAP is now a transformation journey. The transformation preparation service (TPS) for the SAP Business Suite is the next step in aligning closer to the needs of customers.  

Let's have a look at the customer's business challenges that will be addressed by the TPS: 

Many organizations face significant challenges when aligning their vision with execution, often struggling to translate initial promises into tangible outcomes. This disconnect can lead to missed opportunities to maximize value from transformation investments.

Companies need to ensure their transformation initiatives deliver measurable results, making it essential to establish strong governance to ensure processes adhere to standards and are optimized for success. One critical aspect of this is accelerating adoption of new systems, particularly SAP solutions, and fully realizing the entitlements they provide, which can be complex and slow to implement.

In addition, organizations are constantly looking for ways to discover business improvement opportunities that drive continuous progress and innovation. To ensure long-term success, a proactive and structured follow-up plan is necessary to monitor and adjust implementations, ensuring they remain aligned with the evolving needs of the business while delivering sustained value. 

The TPS directly addresses these challenges by offering an immersive experience led by SAP experts during the Prepare phase. This service helps simplify the transformation process, ensuring a seamless transition from vision to execution.

By setting up a comprehensive end-to-end processes, it enables customers to devise a follow-up plan to maximize the value of their SAP investment. This is achieved by fully leveraging SAP entitlements.  

The transformation preparation service for SAP Business Suite offers enhanced SAP expert guidance to empower your project team, building on the insights and outcomes from the Discover phase. This enables customers to confidently prepare and set-up their individual transformation roadmap to the chosen SAP Business Suite applications.

The TPS offers a comprehensive roadmap tailored to enhance SAP investments, integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI), SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), and Business Transformation Management (BTM) with governance maturity assessments.

This service focuses on aligning business objectives with execution strategies and begins with the exploration and identification of relevant AI and BTM use cases. By introducing customers to AI capabilities using tools like Joule, the service helps to pinpoint critical use cases that align with business goals. Once identified, these use cases are demonstrated and deployed, illustrating their tangible benefits and potential business impact. 

In addition, the service helps to strengthen governance frameworks, minimizing risks and ensuring sustainability. It leverages pre-built use cases, best practices, and SAP Business Transformation Management (BTM) to guide customers in making informed decisions regarding their adoption priorities. End-to-end lifecycle demonstrations and toolchain set-up further accelerate adoption and drive long-term transformation success.

By effectively bridging the gap between vision and execution, the transformation preparation service translates business objectives into actionable results, leading to faster time-to-value with a well-defined transformation plan. This aims to ensures higher adoption rates and significant business impact, driven by AI-driven insights, automation, and best-practice enablement. Moreover, it optimizes SAP entitlements through structured adoption, governance, and process optimization, facilitating transformational growth and sustained success for businesses. 

The transformation preparation service facilitates transformation with: 

• Discovery-based insights: Utilization of in-depth business case analysis, value mapping, and architecture blueprints to strategically guide roadmap planning and establish timelines aligned with business objectives. 
• Guided setup services: Collaborate with SAP specialists for expert guidance, ensuring seamless access to cloud service entitlements and efficiently integrating the necessary toolchain to optimize operations. 
• Accelerated value delivery: Drive rapid outcomes through collaborative knowledge transfer, leveraging use case examples and fostering continuous improvement to quickly realize benefits and align with strategic goals. 

The transformation preparation service (TPS) for the SAP Business Suite achieves it's vision by implementing end-to-end scope for every customer.

First, the Tailored Transformation Roadmap at the Line of Business (LoB) and industry level involves reviewing Sales2Success handover artifacts to analyze pre-sales documents, identify entitlements and scope, and ensure SAP solutions are aligned with customer goals through business suite entitlement mapping. Strategic plans are developed to address industry-specific requirements for up to two end-to-end processes.

Second, a Governance Framework for Fit-to-Standard is established through a governance maturity assessment, utilizing a Solution Standardization Board (SSB) to evaluate and enhance current governance practices. This includes SSB governance sessions and workshops that educate customers on maintaining a clean core based on key design principles.

Third, AI Use Cases are explored by introducing customers to AI capabilities and tools like Joule, followed by prioritizing AI use cases to align with business goals through demonstration and deployment.

Fourth, the SAP Build Use Cases guide customers in how to use SAP Build tools for application development and integration, with activation of pre-built use cases for seamless integration and faster benefit realization.

Last, SAP BTM Use Cases are activated by integrating tools like SAP Signavio, SAP LeanIX, and SAP Cloud ALM for comprehensive process analysis and management, leveraging best practices to enhance customer operations facilitating a seamless, well-governed transition from pre-sales to post-sales, equipping businesses with the insights, governance frameworks, and technological tools necessary for successful digital transformation.

Watch the video below to get a better understanding of the TPS.

The transformation preparation service for SAP Business Suite delivers the following key benefits:

• Empowers leaders to focus on business innovation with aligned strategies and processes, ensuring risk management.
• Accelerates and streamlines the execution of customized transformation plans for specific lines of business. 
• Establishes structured, data-driven transformation management through the integrated toolchain. 
• Showcases integration of innovation use cases into a tailored transformation roadmap for enhanced focus.
• Sets up the system with activated transformation capabilities like Joule, SAP Build use cases, and toolchain.
• Strengthens governance and oversight of transformation through Solution Standardization Board steering. 

1. Tailored Transformation Roadmap (LoB / Industry Level)
   • Sales2Success handover artifacts are reviewed.
   • Customer business suite entitlements and solution scope are identified and mapped to customer business goals.
   • An industry/process level transformation plan is created.
   • Scope includes up to one end-to-end process for any one industry. 
2. Integrated Toolchain Activation SAP BTM Use Cases
   • SAP Signavio, SAP LeanIX, and SAP Cloud ALM are introduced. 
   • The toolchain is activated.
   • Workspace is populated with best practice content using SAP Signavio Process Manager. 
   • Process Insights are integrated with data from one back-end SAP system. 
   • Integrated use cases are demonstrated.
   • Scope includes one end-to-end process analysis (process insight, process management, integration to SAP Signavio, SAP Cloud ALM, and SAP LeanIX).
3. Governance Framework for Fit-to-Standard
   • Governance maturity assessment is conducted using the Solution Standardization Board (SSB) questionnaire.
   • A session on good SSB governance, including key design principles and clean core, is held.
   • A session on best practices and accelerators related to SSB governance for the Fit-to-Standard approach is conducted.
   • A workshop is conducted to understand existing governance framework and readiness.
   • Business process and system walk-throughs occur twice with a Fit-to-Standard approach.
   • SSB governance maturity is assessed, and recommendations for best practices, standard contents, and next steps are provided.
4. AI Use Cases (Business Process)
   • SAP Business AI, Joule, and AI capabilities are introduced.
   • AI use cases are demonstrated.
   • AI use case priority is determined based on customer’s future situation, and an AI road map is developed.
   • Joule is activated.
   • Scope includes a demo of up to five AI scenarios, Joule activation via setup service, and one AI use case activation.
5. SAP Build Use Cases
   • SAP Build Apps, SAP Build Process Automation, SAP Build Work Zone, and SAP Build Code are introduced.
   • Accelerators and best practice guides are provided.
   • Use cases are demonstrated.
   • Use case discovery and prioritization are conducted.
   • Activation of up to two pre-built SAP Build use cases occurs.
   • Scope includes activation of up to two pre-built SAP Build use cases in the customer development environment, based on fulfillment of prerequisites.

Having understood the why and what of the transformation preparation service, it's time to delve into the timelines for the activities involved and understand the how part of the service.

The transformation preparation service (TPS) for SAP Business Suite begins after the SAP Cloud ALM set-up by the onboarding team.

The TPS is designed to provide customers with comprehensive support, ensuring they not only plan and strategize their transformation efforts but also receive the necessary tools and governance frameworks for effective implementation and long-term sustainability. This service empowers customers to confidently navigate their digital transformation journey with clear guidance and robust support structures. 

The TPS is offered to all SAP Business Suite customers, allowing each customer to choose whether to engage with this transformative opportunity based on their specific needs and strategic goals. 

Recognizing the complexity and scope of transformation preparation, the service encompasses a multi-disciplinary approach, involving a variety of roles critical to its success.

The illustration below clarifies the collaboration and transition of responsibilities among various stakeholders, contributing to a seamless and effective transformation process. 

The success of the transformation preparation service is a joint effort between SAP and the customer. Both parties are actively involved throughout the process and execution to ensure seamless delivery and transformational success. The customers get involved to: 

• Assign Key Contacts: Customers designate business and IT contacts to enable seamless coordination and effective communication.  
• Share Critical Information: Provide organizational structure, IT strategy, landscape access, architecture models, and value drivers.  
• Project Charter: Offer a comprehensive project charter that outlines the scope, plan, methodology, and governance.  
• Active Participation: Engage in kick-off meetings, overview sessions, and workshops to align on shared objectives. 
• Review and Acknowledge: Evaluate and acknowledge SAP's recommendations for governance and adoption strategies.  
• Execute Adoption Plans: Implement adoption plans and roadmaps to drive successful transformation.  
• Maximize Benefits: Leverage the full potential of SAP Business Suite offerings for long-term value realization.  
• Prerequisite Execution: Fulfill prerequisites for SAP Signavio Process Insights and the plug and gain approach, as guided by SAP.  

The Transformation Preparation Service for SAP Business Suite will be available for all customers. Each customer will have the option whether or not to accept the service.

The following one-pager provides additional information about the Transformation Preparation Service:

One-Pager